Tell el-Fakhariya (Ras al-Ayn) | place with historical importance, archaeological site, tell (mound), ancient ruins

 place with historical importance, archaeological site, tell (mound), invisible, ancient ruins

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Tell el Fakhariya or Tell el Fecheriyeh (among other variants) is the site of an ancient city in the Khabur River basin in the Al Hasakah Governorate of northern Syria. It is securely identified as the site of Sikan, attested since c. 2000 BC. Sikan was part of the Aramaean kingdom of Bit Bahiani in the early 1st millennium BC. In the area several mounds, called tells, can be found in close proximity: Tell el Fakhariya, Ra's al-'Ayn, and Tell Halaf, site of the Aramean and Neo-Assyrian city of Guzana. During the excavation the Tell el Fakhariya Bilingual Inscription was discovered at the site, which provides the source of information about the local ruler Hadad-yith'i.

In the early 20th century Tell el-Fakhariya was suggested as the site of Waššukanni, the capital of the Bronze-Age kingdom of Mittani in the 15th and 14th centuries BC (D. Opitz, "Die Lage von Waššuganni," Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 37 (1927): 299-301). This identification remained popular, but was opposed by an early analysis of the chemical composition of the Amarna tablets assumed to have been produced here (by A. Dobel et al., "Neutron Activation Analysis and the location of Waššukanni," Orientalia 46 (1977): 375-382) and on etymological grounds noting the difficulty in equating Mittanian Waššukanni with a town named Sikan both before and after (E. Lipiński, The Aramaeans, Leuven 2000: 120). Nevertheless, continued investigation of this and neighboring sites has yielded additional evidence in favor of Waššukanni's location in the area, and more recent chemical analysis indicated that the cuneiform tablets containing the Amarna letters from Mittani could indeed have been made here (Y. Goren et al. Inscribed in Clay, Tel Aviv 2004: 38-44). Scholarly opinion has accordingly shifted more decisively in favor of the identification of Tell el-Fakhariya not only with Sikan, but also with Mittanian Waššukanni and Middle-Assyrian Aššukanni, although absolute certainty is elusive. For a summary with references to earlier literature, see for example K. L. Younger, A Political History of the Aramaeans, Atlanta 2016: 242-244.